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##  Limitations of Current Language Testing Practices for Bilinguals.               ERIC Digest.                                                                 

Few diagnostic tools are designed explicitly for children who are               exposed to two languages (Valdes & Figueroa, 1994). Current                     practices for assessment of language in bilinguals frequently                   involve the use of tests that are translated from English to the                target language and/or tests designed for and normed on                         monolinguals. This Digest explains why these common approaches are              not well suited for a bilingual population and provides guidance to             test developers and administrators regarding more suitable                      approaches. PROBLEMS WITH TEST TRANSLATIONWhen tests are                  translated from one language to another, they do not retain their               psychometric properties. Of particular interest in the assessment of            language is the developmental order in which target features of the             language are learned. Translating a test from one language to                   another -- typically from English   may mean that items are                     organized by order of English difficulty, rather than reflecting the            developmental order of the target language. The translated Spanish              version of the Preschool Language Scale-3 provides an illustration.             Restrepo and Silverman (2001) found several item difficulty                     discrepancies between the original English and the translated                   Spanish version when tested with predominately Spanish-speaking                 preschoolers. For example, items related to prepositions, which were            relatively easy for English speakers, were more difficult for                   Spanish speakers. On the other hand, the "function" items requiring             students to point out objects based on a description of their                   use (something like "Show me what people use for cooking" or "What              do you sweep with?") were easier for the Spanish speakers than the              English speakers. 
Figueroa (1989) noted that words may generally              represent the same concept but have variations and different levels             of difficulty across languages. An illustration of this is found in             a study of vocabulary test translations (Tamayo, 1987). When test               items were translated from English to Spanish, they differed in                 frequency of occurrence in each language. Because the Spanish                   translations were of lower frequency within Spanish, test scores                obtained from Spanish speakers were lower compared to scores                    obtained from the original English version. However, when the                   vocabulary items were matched for their frequency of occurrence in              the original and target language and matched for meaning, test                  scores obtained from Spanish and English speakers were                          equivalent. 
Similarly, across different languages, the same                   general category may have different prototypical members, and                   different words may be associated with each language for the same               situation. These contextual variations make translated  vocabulary              tests particularly vulnerable to imbalance. When Pena, Bedore, and              Zlatic-Giunta (in press) asked bilingual four- to six-year-olds to              give examples of animals, the children's three most frequent English            responses were "elephant," "lion," and "dog," while in Spanish they             used "caballo" (horse), "elefante" (elephant), and "tigre" (tiger)              in these orders. 
In addition to vocabulary differences,                       grammatical structure also affects the validity of test translation             practices. For example, nouns are marked by gender in Spanish, but              not English. An English test translated to Spanish will miss aspects            of Spanish, such as gender marking, that are not present in the                 English language. Furthermore, in Spanish, subject information is               frequently carried in the verb, resulting in more complex verbs and             less salient pronouns as compared to English. In English language               assessment, pronoun omission is a hallmark of language impairment,              yet this would not be true for Spanish. Thus, translated language               tests may target inappropriate features for the target language,                resulting in inaccurate assessment of language ability. PROBLEMS              COMPARING BILINGUALS AND MONOLINGUALSBilingual school children              generally fall into the category of circumstantial bilinguals. That             is, their circumstances (often a Spanish-speaking home and an                   English-speaking or bilingual school) require them to use two                   languages. These different environments typically require different             language content. The home environment likely promotes discussions              of common family activities, such as cooking or trips to the store,             while more academic topics, such as colors, numbers, and shapes, are            highlighted in the school environment. Bilingual children thus                  develop different vocabulary content for each language. From a                  testing perspective, this can result in underestimation of concept              knowledge. 
For example, Sattler and Altes (1984) examined                     typically developing three- to six-year-old bilingual Latino                    children's scores on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised and            the McCarthy Perceptual Performance Scale. They found that the                  PPVT-R, whether administered in English or Spanish, yielded scores              far below those of the norms, while all of the children were                    estimated to have normal intelligence based on their McCarthy                   scores. 
A number of studies in the area of vocabulary acquisition             illustrate that in early development, bilinguals learn unique words             across their two languages, rather than learning two words (one in              each language) for each concept. Pearson, Fernandez, and                        Oller (1992) found that young bilinguals (8 to 30 months) often                 produced words for different concepts in each language, with few                concepts labeled in both languages. Similarly Pena, Bedore, and                 Zlatic (in press) found that in a category generation task,                     bilingual children (ages 4 to 6 years) produced more unique words               across Spanish and English than overlapping words. 
When                       monolinguals and bilinguals are compared on measures of vocabulary,             differences become more apparent. Pearson, Fernndez, and                        Oller (1993) used the Spanish and English versions of the MacArthur             Communicative Development Inventory (1989) to estimate bilingual                toddler's vocabularies. They found that when compared to monolingual            norms in either language, their scores were low. However, when they             compared the total number of unique words they produced across the              two languages, their scores were more comparable to the monolingual             norms. 
Another example of findings of differential performance                between monolinguals and bilinguals is with the Test de Vocabulario             en Imagenes Peabody: Adaptcion Hispanoamericana (TVIP-H). This                  version of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) was normed on             monolingual Spanish speakers outside of the U.S. mainland and then              tested with bilingual Hispanics on the U.S. mainland. Bilinguals'               scores were lower than those of the monolinguals (Dunn, 1988). The              differences between monolinguals and bilinguals increased with age              and coincided with schooling in English. Similarly, Umbel, Pearson,             Fernandez, and Oller (1992) used the PPVT-Revised and the                       complementary Spanish version, the TVIP-H, to compare the receptive             vocabularies of bilingual children ages 6 through 8 who were exposed            to both Spanish and English in the home. On average, children                   responded correctly to 67% of the items in their age range in both              languages, but another 8% to 12% were known only in one of their two            languages. Administration of this test in only one language--even               the "dominant" language--would have led to an underestimation of                vocabulary knowledge. 
Conceptual scoring (Pearson, Fernandez, &               Oller, 1993) has been proposed as a more meaningful measure of the              bilingual's conceptual knowledge. The system, which entails counting            the concepts demonstrated (either through constructed or selected               responses) in both languages and correcting for concepts shared in              the two languages, results in a more valid representation of a                  bilingual child's knowledge of concepts. The English/Spanish                    Bilingual Verbal Ability Tests (BVAT) (Cummins, Munoz-Sandoval,                 Alvarado, & Ruef, 1998) is based on this method. IMPLICATIONS AND             FUTURE DIRECTIONSThe psychometric properties of a test,                     including item difficulty, item discrimination, reliability, and                validity, do not automatically translate from one language to                   another, nor do they remain the same when a test is administered to             a different audience than intended. Language tests can be improved              if test developers: 
* Ensure that concepts and linguistic features            are 
appropriately represented for each language. 
* Use                      conceptual scoring systems to eliminate 
understimation of                     ability. 
* Select an appropriate mix of item types to gain                    the 
maximal amount of information about language 
ability in each            language (e.g., an English grammar 
test may contain more emphasis             on pronouns, while 
a Spanish grammar test might include more                  items 
related to gender and number agreement). 
* Consider the               frequency of occurrence of the words. 
An important long-term goal             is to better understand the development of language skills in                   bilinguals in order to develop language tests designed for, and                 normed on, bilinguals. REFERENCESCummins, J., Munoz-Sandoval,             A.F., Alvarado, C.G., & Ruef, M.L. (1998). The Bilingual Verbal                 Ability Tests. I tasca, IL: Riverside Publishing. 
Dunn,                       L.H. (1988). Bilingual Hispanic Children on the  U.S. Mainland. A               Review of Research on Their Cognitive, Linguistic, and Scholastic               Development. Honolulu, HI: Dunn Educational Services. 
Figueroa,               R. (1989). Psychological testing of linguistic-minority students:               Knowledge gaps and regulations. Exceptional Children, 56,                       145-148. 
Pearson, B.Z., Fernandez, M.C., & Oller, D.K. (1992).                Measuring bilingual children's receptive vocabularies. Child                    Development, 63, 1012-1221. 
Pearson, B.Z., Fernandez, M.C., &                 Oller, D.K. (1993). Lexical development in bilingual infants and                toddlers: Comparison to monolingual norms. Language Learning, 43,               93-120. 
Pena, E.D., Bedore, L.M., & Zlatic-Giunta, R. (in press).             Development of categorization in young bilingual children.  Journal             of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. 
Restrepo, M.A., &                  Silverman, S.W. (2001). Validity of the Spanish Preschool Language              Scale-3 for use with bilingual children. American Journal of                    Speech-Language Pathology,  10, 382-393. 
Sattler, J.M., & Altes,              L.M. (1984). Performance of bilingual and monolingual Hispanic                  children on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised and the                 McCarthy Perceptual Performance Scale. Psychology in the Schools,               21, 313-316. 
Tamayo, J. (1987). Frequency of use as a measure of              word  difficulty in bilingual vocabulary test construction and                  translation. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 47,                     893-902. 
Umbel, V. M., Pearson, B.Z., Fernandez, M.C., & Oller,               D.K. (1992). Measuring bilingual children's receptive vocabularies.             Child Development, 63, 1012-1020. 
Valdes, G., & Figueroa,                     R.A. (1994). Bilingualism and Testing: A Special Case of Bias.                  Norwood, NJ: Ablex. 
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This publication was prepared with                funding from the Office of Education Research and Improvement, U.S.             Department of Education, under contract ED-99-CO-0032. The opinions             expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect the positions or            policies or the U.S. Department of Education. Permission is granted             to copy and distribute this ERIC/AE Digest.                                  **Title:** Limitations of Current Language Testing Practices for Bilinguals.               ERIC Digest.                                                                 **Document Type:** Information Analyses---ERIC Information Analysis Products (IAPs) (071); Information Analyses---ERIC Digests (Selected) in Full Text (073); **Available From:** ERIC Clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation, 1129 Shriver                   Laboratory, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742. Tel:                800-464-3742 (Toll Free); Web site: http://ericae.net.                       **Descriptors:** Bilingual Education,  Bilingual Students, Bilingualism, Elementary              Secondary Education, Higher Education,  Language Tests,                          Psychometrics,  Test Use,  Testing Problems,  Translation                   **Identifiers:** ERIC Digests                                                                 
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